


I Could Get Better With You

by idiotbrothers



Category: Machine Gun Kelly (Musician)
Genre: (LOTS OF ISSUES), 5+1 Things, Age Difference, Angst, Blood Kink (light), Closure, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Internalized Homophobia, Introspection, Lack of Communication, Love Confessions, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mutual Pining, POV Em, Pet Names (light), Possessive Behavior, Self-Worth Issues, Switching, intimacy issues, mentions of suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:00:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28967223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idiotbrothers/pseuds/idiotbrothers
Summary: There is an inexorable breaking point.Or: 5 times Kells cries in front of Em and 1 time Em cries in front of Kells.
Relationships: Colson Baker | Machine Gun Kelly/Eminem
Comments: 14
Kudos: 36





	I Could Get Better With You

**Author's Note:**

> Title inspired by a line from Nine Inch Nails' "Love Is Not Enough". 
> 
> See also:  
> ⭐ "Luca" by Brand New  
> ⭐ "Stalemate" by Limp Bizkit  
> ⭐ "Bad Machine" by Boston Manor
> 
> RPF Disclaimer: I made this all up! Don't take it too seriously!

1\.   
  


“Kelly. Kelly, hey, look at me.” 

“That’s not my fuckin’ name,” Kells says, his voice strangled and his face screwed up in pain.  
  
“Okay, fuckin’... Col - ”

“Fuck _off_ ,” Kells says, and his hands are over his face and his throat is working and Marshall’s _dick_ is in his _ass_ and how did they even get here.  
  
Marshall gulps in a breath, wraps his hands around Kells’ bony wrists and tries in vain to uncover his face. “Is that - Do you want me to stop? ‘cause if you do, that’s totally - ”

“You asshole,” Kells says, and Marshall’s hands are stroking soothingly at his sides now, “You stupid fucking asshole.” 

“Colson - ”

“ _Don’t_ ,” he snaps, and his hands fly away from his face and he is _furious_ and there are tears glistening on his skin like pearls. “Just - ” He squirms impatiently underneath him, and Marshall takes the hint; and when his slow, cautious thrusts devolve into mindlessly violent, animalistic rutting; Kells throws his pretty head back and moans like a whore and afterward, Marshall realizes he’d still been crying when he climaxed.   
  


2.  
  


“Aw, fuck,” Kells exclaims from the kitchenette of his hotel room, and Marshall scrambles off the couch to see why.  
  
“ _Again_?” Marshall asks, incredulous, when he spots the bloody cut on Kells’ left index finger. “You shouldn’t be allowed near anything sharp,” Marshall adds, and helps Kells loop a section of paper towel around his finger in place of a band-aid. “What were you doing over here anyway? You don’t cook.” 

“I could cook if I wanted to,” Kells protests, waving the steak knife he’d presumably cut himself with around recklessly.  
  
“Uh-huh,” Marshall says, and grabs at his arm to make him stop moving, reaching for the safe end of the knife with his other hand. 

“Don’t say it like that,” Kells sputters, “I totally could. I could cook you a fuckin’ three-course meal.” 

Marshall, who is busy rinsing the knife off in the sink, doesn’t look at him when he remarks, “Like a good little wife.” 

Kells makes a sort of choking noise and Marshall glances up in time to see him redden. “I’m _not_ your - ”

“Kidding,” Marshall says mildly, and thinks, _Huh. That’s new_.  
  
Kells, still blushing, unravels the makeshift bandage from around his finger and inspects his cut.  
  
“Don’t touch it,” Marshall says, like he’s talking to a child, and takes the paper towel from him with the intention of winding it back onto his finger, before he notices the torn-open package of frozen ravioli on the counter. “Hold up,” Marshall says slowly, nodding at the bag, “Were you actually gonna try to make me dinner?” 

Kells’ response is too quick. “Dude, what? No. _No_. This isn’t some - some fuckin’... ” He trails off into awkward silence, his hands shoved deep into his pockets and his shoulders hunched, and his face isn’t getting any less red.  
  
Marshall opens his mouth to throw him a lifeline, but before he can say anything, Kells winces and sucks in a breath through his teeth and Marshall’s amusement gives way to concern. “You okay?” 

“Fine,” Kells says brusquely. His eyes are watering.  
  
Acting on instinct, Marshall gently tugs Kells’ left hand out of his pocket and raises it towards himself. The cut on his finger has somehow deepened considerably, and is streaked with blood. Marshall frowns. The words to his increasingly relevant and perpetually paternal anti-self-harm speech rattle around in his head, but he doesn’t think it’s quite the right moment to use them. He doesn’t say anything at all; just _tsk_ s disapprovingly, and then he does something completely impulsive. He brings Kells’ hand up to his face, takes his index finger into his mouth, and sucks the blood right off.  
  
Kells stares at Marshall like he just bonked him over the head with a baseball bat, and cradles his now-mostly-clean hand against his chest defensively. “ _What_ ,” he asks, his eyes wide, “was that?” 

Kells’ embarrassment has this odd way of fueling the ravenous fire burning in Marshall's center, otherwise he might be pretty embarrassed himself right now. As it is, he’s more turned on than anything else. “An appetizer,” he quips, and Kells isn’t even trying to pretend he isn’t looking at his mouth, and that makes him feel fucking _incredible_. 

“You just - ” Audible gulp, shuffling of feet, flitting of eyes. “You just love to watch me squirm, don’t you.” 

“Yeah,” Marshall agrees, shameless, “ _Horny and confused_ looks good on you.”

_Everything looks good on you. You’re beautiful, and I have you to myself for who knows how much longer, and I’m not wasting a single minute_. 

“C’mere,” Marshall murmurs, and slides a hand around the back of his perfect neck, and leans up to kiss his perfect mouth, and feels the hard length of his perfect cock bumping into him.  
  
Marshall withdraws slightly when he feels a sudden wetness on Kells’ face, and his higher brain functions flicker back on as he notes the pain that’s creasing his face once more, the tears beading at the very corners of his eyes. Alarm bells sound off in Marshall’s head, and he faintly registers Kells saying, “You’re being so… different, today,” before he remembers Kells’ finger and uncurls his fist to check on it. Sure enough, he’d aggravated the wound even further, and it’s weeping blood all over his palm.  
  
Sighing, Marshall closes Kells’ fingers and lets his own fingers rest on top of them, a sort of needle-tipped empathy plunging into him. “Let’s get this properly cleaned up,” he says to Kells, who blinks down at his bleeding hand like he’d forgotten about it entirely.  
  
“Oh,” he says, “okay.” And something like guilt or disappointment flashes across his face, which Marshall needs to fix _immediately_ , because fuck that.  
  
He reaches up to brush Kells’ tousled hair out of his eyes, traces a thumb from his cheek to the tip of his chin as he says, “You know you can talk to me, right?”  
  
Kells frowns, as if he’s thinking, _Can I, though?_

It’s a fair question. Thus far, their relationship has mostly comprised of boundless nights of rough sex and the occasional hesitant conversation in the suffocating depths of a soiled hotel bed. But Marshall can feel something starting to change between them, night by night, and he desperately hopes he’s not the only one. “Anytime,” Marshall emphasizes, poking the furrow between Kells’ eyebrows, “Day or night. You got my number.” 

“That is… mad corny,” Kells says, but there’s a repressed smile in his voice, and his eyes are glittering with unspoken gratitude. Marshall kisses him again, all the while thinking, _I’m gonna protect you_ , with a ferocity that really should scare him.

  
3.  
  


“Your hair,” Marshall says dazedly to Colson, who had just hurried over to him across the airport parking lot with a characteristically expensive-looking suitcase trailing behind him, and is now folded into Marshall's passenger seat.  
  
“Oh yeah,” Colson says, touching a hand to his windswept hair, which he must have dyed jet-black very recently, or else Marshall would have seen it on social media, if not over FaceTime. “I kind of had a mental breakdown the other night,” Colson continues, “But, like, the low-key kind, where I just need to change something about my dumb face. Y’know?” He pauses, bites his lip. “Do you hate it?” 

“Definitely not,” Marshall says hastily, “I got used to the blond, is all.” For the entire duration of the six months that they’d been quote-unquote _together_ so far, Colson had been the same fair-headed, angel-faced yet foul-mouthed boy - draped in whimsical prints and shades of pink - who had initially awakened a long-dormant hunger in him. Now, he seems to be favoring the edgier side of his personal style - dark hair that brings out the severity of his facial features, impenetrable layers of barbed silver chains around his neck, a comically oversized black sweater swallowing his slender frame. Colson pokes his left hand out of his frayed cable-knit sleeve to nervously toy with one of his growing array of earrings, and Marshall is quietly pleased to note the neon pink nail polish he’s wearing. “You look good,” Marshall says, fond, truthful.  
  
Colson smiles wryly. “I’m starting to think you’d tell me that if I shaved all my hair off and got my scalp tatted.”  
  
Marshall forces himself not to sound alarmed. “Is that something you seriously think about doing?”  
  
Colson snorts. “Don’t look so worried. I’m giving myself another five years at least before I go full SoundCloud Rapper. You’ll probably be remarried by then, to like...” He blinks, and adds, “I just realized I don’t know your type.”  
  
 _You’re my type_ , Marshall thinks intently, but doesn’t say. What he _does_ say is, “You don’t think we’ll still be seeing each other five years from now?” 

“No fuckin’ way, dude,” Colson says, and Marshall has to pretend the callousness of that answer doesn’t stab into his heart. He’s unwittingly dragged out of his fog of self-pity when Colson clarifies, in a cautious, hedging tone, “You’re gonna get sick of me way earlier than that. I’m not, like… _built_ for… whatever. People fuck me a few times and move on. And that’s fine, it works for me.” 

Marshall’s hand wanders over to Colson’s knee, peeking out pale and inked from the safety-pinned gash in his jeans. He’s looking at Colson’s knee instead of his face when he says, “You think I’m just like all those other people.” It’s not a question.  
  
“I mean, yeah,” Colson says, gruff now. “But it’s not like we’re... ” His voice wavers a bit before he descends into silence.  
  
“Say it,” Marshall prompts, with an unintended sharpness. He returns his eyes to Colson’s face, takes in the unhappy line of his mouth, the despair in his flickering gaze.  
  
“It’s, uh. I’m... fucked in the head, okay. I got a couple screws loose. So, like, even though we’re just fucking, it’s gonna get to a point where my psycho bullshit ain’t worth it anymore.”

“That hasn’t been my experience,” Marshall says carefully, and Colson lets out a bitter laugh almost before he’s done speaking.  
  
“We barely ever talk, Em. Unless it’s about your dick, or _my_ dick, or - or… ” He scrubs a hand over his eyes. “I’m just sayin’, if you really knew me, you wouldn’t keep me around.” 

Marshall feels his expression softening in tandem with the throbbing of his heart. He doesn’t turn his face away. “Someone did a number on you, huh?” 

Colson blinks rapidly, his eyebrows drawing together. “What?”  
  
Marshall takes his hand, strokes a thumb calmingly across his knuckles. “Who do you think you’re talking to, kid? If I wanted to tell you about all _my_ psycho bullshit, we’d be sittin’ here for months.”  
  
Colson sniffles, and Marshall can’t keep himself from shifting up to press a chaste kiss to the edge of his mouth. He draws back once more to look Colson straight in his tear-glazed eyes and say, “I _need_ you around, so suck it up.” He delivers those words with a smile so they aren’t misconstrued, and freezes up when Colson all but attacks him with a hug, shivers wracking his body as his hands grasp at the back of Marshall’s hoodie.  
  
He sinks into it after a shaky moment, his palm traveling up and down Colson’s spine and his chin against his shoulder. He smells as intoxicating as ever - some delicious new cologne and spearmint gum and that luxurious citrusy gunk he puts in his hair - and Marshall breathes him in, loses himself to the scent and feel of him and wants to tell Colson that he’s taken over his dreams, that he drafts and deletes messages to him all the time and that he’s never felt anything quite like this. That he might be seriously addicted, and does Colson feel the same way? But all Marshall actually says, into his skin, is, “You got me.”   
  


4.

“There you are,” Marshall says, spotting Colson leaning against the ledge of the rooftop terrace, weed smoke wafting around his head and the swaths of silver studs on his velvety jacket turned electric purple in the glow of the LED strip lighting.  
  
They’re currently at an Interscope event, and they’d kept each other at arm’s length all night, and Marshall had a feeling Colson would end up here, far away from the throng of simpering executives and misanthropic artists, taking refuge in the dark.  
  
Colson turns to regard him, elbows up against the exposed brick. He lifts his joint and says, charitably, “I can put this out.”  
  
Marshall waves off the gesture and slots in next to him, gazing out into the vast, blaring expanse of the city; the somber, capitalistic light show of it all. He gives Colson a sidelong glance. “You drunk?” 

“Naw,” Colson says, but then, “Kinda.” 

“I don’t blame you,” Marshall says, “There’s a reason I usually avoid these parties like the fuckin’ plague. Wanted to blow my brains out, talking to Janick’s little corporate minions.” 

“Mm,” Colson utters impassively, and Marshall takes a closer look at him, nudging at his arm to get him to face him.  
  
“Hey. What’s wrong?” 

“I’m fine,” Colson says. Thousand-yard stare, tight jaw, restless hands.  
  
 _No, you’re not._  
  
Marshall plants a palm on his chest, shifts his weight to his toes. Colson, anticipating his next move, stops him with a jerk of his head. “Someone might see,” he says, in a thoroughly miserable tone of voice, and, _Oh, so it’s this again_. Well, Marshall can give him what he wants, for once.  
  
“Let ‘em,” Marshall says grandly. It’s a pretty lie. Marshall had automatically surveyed the roof minutes ago to make sure they were alone, that there weren’t any stragglers at the closed bar or in the tacky lounge chairs crouching in the shadows.  
  
Colson flicks the remnants of his joint to the ground and hauls him up for a desperate kiss, tasting of weed and liquor and _sex_ \- shit, he’d hooked up with another nameless slut tonight, hadn’t he - and Marshall slides his fingers up beneath the links of the thick chain around his neck and squeezes just hard enough to make Colson gasp into his mouth. _Mine_ , Marshall thinks fiercely, feeling the word thudding rhythmically against his ribs like a caged animal.  
  
Colson’s beautiful fucking hands fumble for the waistband of his pants, and Marshall is just about to say, _No, let me_ , when there’s a burst of drunken laughter from the stairwell, and Marshall shoves Colson away violently, his heart breaking out of his chest. He creates a good four feet of space between them and looks for the source of the sound, two clearly inebriated girls who are just now emerging onto the rooftop, clinging to each other and oblivious to their surroundings.  
  
He breathes a heavy sigh of relief, but guilt consecutively floods him when he realizes what he’d just done, and he swivels his head back around to Colson. His hands are clenched into fists, and he’s glaring at Marshall with such unbridled fury in his eyes that it makes an icy chill settle into his bones.  
  
“Fuck you,” Colson says, low enough for only him to hear. “I’m over this shit.” 

Marshall can’t even spit out a _wait_ before Colson is pushing past him and striding towards the stairs, the depths of his anger apparent in just the line of his shoulders. 

* * *

Later that night, Marshall is lying wide awake in bed, sick with regret and dizzily chasing what-ifs until he finally gives in to his brain’s demands around two in the morning and dials Colson’s number, his fingers worrying at his bottom lip. Colson picks up on the third ring, to Marshall’s immense gratitude.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Marshall blurts, before he’s even said anything, “I’m sorry I’m like this. I’m sorry I hurt you.”  
  
There is silence on Colson’s end, and then his voice, sounding somehow _wrong_ , says, “Why?”  
  
Marshall shakes his head uselessly. “‘cause of the way I grew up. ‘cause I do this thing where I demonize every part of me that’s - ”

“No,” Colson interrupts, and he is definitely high out of his mind on something, “I’m askin’... why’re you sorry?” 

Marshall balks. “What do you… ”

“‘m only good for one thing,” Colson says, like he’s answering his own question. “I don’t get… apologized to.”

“That’s _not_ \- ”

“Can you just,” his voice cracks, “Can you just stop leading me on? Fuckin’... tell me to my face how it is, otherwise I start to, like, make shit up.” 

“How it is,” Marshall echoes blankly, “Okay.” He clears his throat. “I don’t want you to fuck other people anymore.” _Really, asshole? You’re gonna open with that?_

Colson is ominously silent, which Marshall takes as a sign to clarify his reasons. “A-and. I want us to be… I want… ”  
  
 _I want to know all your hidden faces. I want to wake up next to you every morning. I want everyone you meet to look at you and know you belong to me._  
  
Marshall’s throat closes up at the mere thought of voicing anything like that aloud. What good would it do, when he knows what Colson needs in return, and he can’t give it to him?  
  
“I can’t do it,” Colson says, sounding pained, “I can’t be your _fucktoy_ anymore.” 

“That’s not what I’m asking,” Marshall says, his desperation leaking into the receiver. “I _care_ about you, don’t you get that? Don’t I show you all the time? So what if the motherfucking vultures in the press don’t get to know about it.” 

“You think I give a shit about the press?” Colson asks, raising his voice. “ _Fuck_ the press; it’s not about them. It’s about your shame multiplying mine. It’s about how I have a hard enough time not killing myself without you, of all people, treating me like - like an easy lay.” He pauses to take a breath, audible through the phone, and adds, “I’m not even putting most of the blame on you for that part. Again, I get it - sex is one of the only things I know I’m good at.” Marshall starts to protest at this, but Colson talks over him. “What we’re doing, though… it’s too confusing. You let me believe all this shit about what I am to you, just to keep hooking up with me. You would’ve been better off telling me the truth right out the gate.” 

“You’re oversimplifying this,” Marshall says tightly. “Love and lust don’t have to be mutually exclusive.” 

“Love?” 

_Fuck!_

Marshall once again forgets how to speak, nothing but nonsensical stammering escaping his mouth in response. 

“You don’t _love_ me,” Colson says, with an almost manic intensity. “See, this is what I’m talking about. These fuckin’ crazy implications. At a certain point, it’s just… it’s cruel.” 

Something comes over Marshall, and without thinking about it, he snaps, “It’s _not_ crazy, and it’s not cruel. It’s how I fucking feel.” 

“Stop lying to me,” Colson says, broken and small and audibly holding back tears.

Marshall is still caught in the roiling tide that had swept away his inhibitions moments ago, practically shuddering with it. He’d broken the dam, and there’s no going back. “I love you. You’re too messed up to see it, but it’s true. It’s been true for a long time now.” 

“No,” Colson says, around a sob. 

“Yes. I love you. I can keep saying it until you believe me; every day, if that’s what it takes.” 

“I’m sorry,” Colson says, heartrendingly forlorn, “I don’t - ”

And then he hangs up.

Marshall lowers his phone to his lap, his hands trembling and his mind full of static. A blinding rage overcomes him after an endless, empty moment, and he takes his phone and flings it against the wall, the resounding cracking noise it makes a facsimile of the sensation deep inside his chest. He buries his face in his hands, and he falls to pieces. 

* * *

* * *

Colson drops his phone, hyperventilating and tearing at his hair, at his bare skin. _What should I do what should I do what should I do_. He wants to drink himself into oblivion, the urge roaring inside him, beastlike, and it takes every bit of self-control he has not to succumb to it. He _needs_ to think.  
  
He brings himself down from the precipice of a full-on panic attack, focusing on taking deep breaths and on counting backwards in his head. As soon as he’s calmed down, and chugged a glass of water, and glared at the city skyline for an interminable length of time, he turns toward the issue at hand.  
  
 _He says he loves you_.  
  
Colson confidently recognizes that it can’t be true, that even if Marshall somehow believes in the statement and isn’t just forcing it, his illusions will inevitably be wiped away over time. Colson has never been, and will never be, a person worth loving, especially not by someone so much stronger and smarter and lightyears more accomplished than him. A wheedling voice in the back of his head asks, _But if he actually does believe it right now, is that so bad?_ Colson is greedy. Colson wants to believe it himself, so fucking badly that it’s like Marshall punctured a gaping hole into him with his words alone - and isn’t that funny, because when he was just a thorny, misunderstood kid with Eminem blasting through his headphones, Marshall’s words were always patching him back up.  
  
Colson shifts his focus to thoughts of Marshall himself - to how, at some point, he’d started openly smiling around Colson on a regular basis; subtle little quirks of his mouth whenever he locked eyes with him, face-splitting grins on the rare occasion that Colson managed a witty comeback to one of Marshall’s many darkly comedic observations.  
  
He thinks about all the times their conversations _did_ dig beneath the surface - text exchanges into the early hours of morning about Colson’s never-ending anxiety around his career or half-whispered utterances in bed about Marshall’s crippling fear of rejection or staticky reassurances over FaceTime that they had each other for moral support, that everybody else in their lives who only acknowledged the more palatable bits and pieces of them could suck it.  
  
He thinks about how he crawled back to Marshall one night after both their tempers flared and Colson let off steam by picking a fight with some dickhead at a nearby bar, and how Marshall quietly cleaned his wounds for him in the aftermath, kissing his bandages in lieu of a verbalized apology.  
  
He thinks about his ugliest moments with Marshall - how he’d let some fundamental insecurity carve stinging paths under his skin for days and eventually make itself known through enraged shouts and random objects thrown and shattered and hot tears coursing down his cheeks. He thinks about how Marshall never, not once, used those moments against him; would usually hold him and shush him and murmur sugar-sweet words into his hair.  
  
He thinks about the way Marshall sounded - over dozens or hundreds of different nights - when Colson was making him come, the awe and appreciation he expressed in a breathless tumble of pet names and expletives, the undeniable adoration in his eyes before they fluttered shut.

And finally, he thinks, _Maybe. Maybe._   
  


5.  
  


Marshall has no idea what time it is when he hears an urgent knock at the door of his hotel suite. All he knows is that his eyes are sore from crying, and his stupid goddamn heart has been bleeding out for what feels like hours, and the first thing he thinks, with an ill-advised swell of hope sweeping past the carnage in his chest, is, _Colson?_  
  
He clambers off the floor and rushes over to check, asking, “Who is it,” in a voice that sounds rusted with disuse.  
  
He hears Colson saying, “Marsh, I need to - ” and he doesn’t even let him finish his sentence, pushes the door open and envelops him in a crushing embrace, fresh tears prickling at his eyes and his lacerated heart emitting a single laborious throb that he feels in his whole body.  
  
“We don’t have to talk about it,” Marshall rasps, almost incoherent, into Colson’s shoulder, “I won’t bring it up ever again. Just - just don’t leave. Please. _Please_.”

“Fuck,” Colson breathes, sounding close to tears himself. He’s warm and solid and _real_ in Marshall’s arms and he can’t let him go.  
  
“Hey, c’mon, look at me.”  
  
Marshall allows Colson to hold him at arm’s length, to cup his face with one large hand and search his eyes with an intent, sorrowful gaze. “Fuck,” he says again, shaking his head slightly. “I’m so sorry. I - I didn’t realize I could hurt you this much.” 

“Don’t leave,” Marshall says, still frantic, unable to focus on much else besides the awful possibility that Colson is only here to cut things off in more official terms, that this might be the last time he ever touches him.  
  
“Let’s go inside,” Colson suggests softly, but Marshall isn’t at all ready for whatever difficult conversation Colson has come here to have, and he strains upward to kiss him instead, Colson indulging him for a painfully brief moment before he angles his head away and says, “Baby. I promise I’m not leaving.” 

_Baby_ , Marshall thinks, his skin aflame with humiliation and want in equal measure. Colson has never called him that before. It should be completely emasculating coming from him, all things considered, but arousal wins out as it so often does with Colson, and he’s shaking with it, with how much he suddenly needs Colson inside him.  
  
“There we go,” Colson says, leading him back into his room with a palm spread over his lower back, and Marshall is putty in his hands. Colson sits Marshall down on the couch, and goes to take a seat in the armchair across from it, but Marshall stops him with a hand around his wrist. Colson seems to understand his silent plea, because he sits down next to him instead, a complicated smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “So,” he says, “I’ve been thinking.” 

“Bad sign,” Marshall croaks, in a pitiful attempt at masking his heart-pounding terror, but Colson grins beatifically at him in response, like maybe he’s just relieved Marshall is capable of forming the barest semblance of a snarky comment right now. Marshall has to consciously will down the impulse to climb on top of him and kiss him senseless.  
  
“I’ve been _thinking_ ,” Colson continues, pointedly emphatic, “that it’s possible I’ve been too stuck in my own head to see what's right in front of me.”  
  
Marshall temporarily stops breathing.   
  
“And that it's... ” Colson continues, shy now, averting his eyes, “it’s possible I could - that I maybe also - um… ”  
  
With adrenaline coursing through him, Marshall stands and faces Colson, who remains seated on the couch, blinking up at him nervously for a beat before Marshall bends down to seal their mouths together, gripping at his shoulders, unlocking Colson’s insatiable appetite for him at long last, a jolt of electricity scrambling his brain when Colson grabs at his ass, pushes his tongue into his mouth and makes these hot, needy little noises that turn Marshall inside out.  
  
“Bed,” Marshall grunts, wrenching himself upward and taking Colson with him, mentally cataloging his rapturous face - spit glistening on his sucked-red mouth, eyes luminous and dazed and absolutely riveted to Marshall, hair in glorious disarray - for future reference. _Too good to be true_ reverberates against the hollows of Marshall’s skull, but he forcefully dismisses the thought, because they can take this thing one day at a time and if there’s a single truth he accepts with every fiber of his being, it’s that Colson is worth waiting for.  
  
“I want you to fuck me,” Marshall says, and Colson is stuttering and blushing and unambiguously _his_.  
  
After, when Colson is peppering his tear-swollen eyelids with kisses and tracing tiny hearts over his naked chest with his finger, Marshall dreamily reaffirms to himself: _Worth waiting for_.

**Author's Note:**

> Me: [sitting down to write some fluff for once]  
> My piece of shit brain: "lmao not on my watch fam" 
> 
> Hope you liked it! I've been tossing around the idea of making an emgk side-blog on tumblr so I can engage with y'all more effectively but I'm afraid of commitment lol. In the meantime... comments please? 🥺👐
> 
> (Also, if you did like this, check out my other emgk works!)


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